What about land cost? Do the cost stated there include land cost? What about in places where land is expensive?
The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
401–410 of 448 posts
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#402The price of raw cells are super cheap now and if you're willing to reearch, engineering and DIY, you can build great panels for even cheaper. As many large projects come online, both li-ion and solar are going to fall through the floor faster than Moore's Law for some time, and the slow down.
I suspect solar deployment will take the US by surprise, because of the compelling economics.
Hint: go long on SCTY
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flywheels are another option: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Pumped storage is routinely used to store energy. It's not theoretical. Has Flywheel storage every been seriously used in large-scale commercial applications? Someone mentions it on every energy-storage thread, and I'd like to know if the people suggesting it are just spinning our wheels.
FES is used in non-kill-zone habitable solutions like datacenters, bottoms of passenger trams/hybrid buses and electromagnetic aircraft catapults. The historical issue with FES is unscheduled, rapid disassembly, but carbon/kevlar composites have been shown to have greater integrity with least unsprung structural mass (because you want the most mass as close to the rim as possible to ensure highest moment of inertia.)
FES has 10x specific energy than supercapacitors or batteries with no memory and precise state of charge. Magnetic bearings and hard vacuums make them quite efficient.
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can validate. The problem with electricity is that there is no large scale storage like there is for other forms of energy like NG and Crude. Until someone comes along and figures out how to store electricity, this will continue to cause grief to power companies. Power plants are really just options, if the price per kWh is at a certain point then it makes sense to spin up or take down a plant and generate power. Add…
Instead (or rather in addition) to storing power, we can also get better at coordinating demand. There are already programs for industrial users to get electricity for much cheaper, if they can tolerate power cuts during peak demand. Those programs will become more and more rewarding to join and extend and automate as supply gets spikier.
Yup. Having many distributed li-ion battery walls charging at night for peak assist during the day is one way to level out demand and make the energy infrastructure more resilient in a Google-servers-like way.
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yikes. Yes, of course technology is driven by human preferences. But, No, humans must occasionally accept that certain habits are not sustainable given current and near-future technologies.
I generally agree with your position but in this particular scenario the people with the greatest capacity to adjust their behavior are the people who will be affected the least financially by a hike in peak prices and thus less likely to change or more likely to invest in solar at home, while those with the least flexibility in work arrangements and spending, e.g. lower income earners working in the services sector,…
If the spot market was the status quo, and someone was suggesting a change to the current system of flat prices, one could make the same argument. (Ie already well off people are flexible enough to make use of the new system better.)
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good thing. Peak power usage is midday, so providing additional supply at that time avoids the need to site new plants, which costs millions or billions of dollars. It also makes coal less economical and makes gas plants, which are cleaner and safer to operate more economical.
Peak load is actually around 6pm.
I guess it depends on country.
Some countries need AC, others need heating.
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very efficient and it's a great solution overall; the only problem is there are only so many dams we can build, since each one requires drowning a valley.
Solution: swimming pool on the roof. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672202/you-deserve-a-house-with...
"Have you seen the swimming pool on the roof?"
;)
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead (or rather in addition) to storing power, we can also get better at coordinating demand. There are already programs for industrial users to get electricity for much cheaper, if they can tolerate power cuts during peak demand. Those programs will become more and more rewarding to join and extend and automate as supply gets spikier.
Is there a way to coordinate demand without asking thousands of people to give Alice the ability to shut off their appliances?
Actually, there already is, it's called OpenADR.
http://products.openadr.org/?posts_per_page=-1
See also Ecobee vs. Nest: http://controltrends.org/controltrends-news/news-and-informa...
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solution: swimming pool on the roof. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672202/you-deserve-a-house-with...
Seriously though has anyone crunched the numbers on rainwater storage for microgeneration in a domestic setting. Could I efficiently use excess solar to pump water in to a house roof storage area and generate electric from that?
The Tesla Powerwall has 6.5 kwh = 23.4 M joules.
Gravity potential energy = mgh. Suppose pool is 10 meters up, then you need 239,000 kg of water = 63K gallons or 8400 cu ft. This is a huge pool: 29 ft. x 29 ft x 10 ft.
You could use the city water supply: borrow water through a turbine at night, and return it during the day :-)
Or have pool up very high, for example on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean:
http://inhabitat.com/crazy-home-carved-into-a-coastal-cliff-...
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
How long until you start seeing a return on investment? Right now my electricity bill for my home is ~100 a month in Texas. I would need to keep the same panels without maintenance fees for 33.33 years by your price point of 40k
$100 a month in the summer in Texas? You living in a shoe box in the panhandle or what? I spend $700 a month in August. Tell us your secret for real.
What are you setting your AC to?